by Eva Ashwood
“Well, I’ve eaten.”
He raised a brow. “You sure are pushy tonight.”
“Yeah, well, I think I’ve earned it,” I said sharply, my anger spiking again. “I think I’ve earned the courtesy of an explanation, even if I can’t do anything about it. You should’ve given me one before dragging me out on this excursion blind. I might belong to you, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a fucking person.”
I’d never cursed so much in my life, but I was shaking with lingering adrenaline and anger, and the polite words I’d been raised to use just didn’t seem to cut it right now.
Bishop shrugged. “Fair enough.”
He shoved a fry in his mouth, as if this conversation wasn’t anything that bothered him. I wished I could be like that, totally unbothered with things that should definitely, one hundred percent upset me.
“You wanna know what we were doing tonight, and why. You wanna know like it’s an easy answer, like you already know the ins and outs of shit. But you don’t. Because despite what you’ve seen of Slateview and the wrong side of the tracks, you still don’t fuckin’ get it, Princess,” he said, his voice cool and blunt. “Yeah, we broke into a place, and yeah we stole, and yeah we didn’t fuckin’ tell you. Because you know why? It’s our damn job. We’ve been doin’ this for years, Princess, and you suddenly plopping yourself into the middle of our lives isn’t gonna change that. You ever heard of Nathaniel Ward?”
Blinking slowly, I shook my head.
“Yeah, well, of course you wouldn’t. He’s a bit of a crime lord around here. Leverages information. Sometimes drugs. Got his hands in a lot of shit, actually. He’s powerful and connected enough to do pretty much whatever he wants without the cops gettin’ involved. The three of us have been working for him forever, because it’s the only viable option for three guys with no families and a need to take care of themselves.”
His voice hardened, and he leaned forward in his seat, bringing his face closer to mine.
“You think any of the people whose houses we hit are innocent? After everything you’ve seen? Get fuckin’ real, Princess. Nobody makes it to a certain position in the world without sacrificing something. You can just call what we do ‘karma’. And when it comes down to it, if you were in our positions, you’d do the same damn thing if it meant putting food on your table, or clothes on your back, or taking care of your family. You got no right to judge. None. And you ain’t learned a fucking thing since coming to Slateview if the first thing you do when you find out about our business is go on a tirade about ‘well, what about the rich people’. Fuck rich people. Those cocksuckers are the reason we’re even doing this shit to begin with.”
There was something in Bishop’s voice I’d never heard before. Even on the night when he’d broken into my bedroom—an action that was a lot less surprising now—he hadn’t sounded so bitter. There was a deep, hard anger in his tone that brought me up short.
I honestly hadn’t considered that this was something they were doing out of necessity. I’d always been taught that every criminal had a choice: they could either choose to break the law, or they could do the right thing. Circumstances were never an excuse.
But I knew Bishop had been on his own for years, with no parents and a foster family that barely registered his existence. What about Kace? And Misael? Why did they need to break into people’s houses and do shady jobs at all the hours of the night just to make ends meet?
Why was I even wondering if it justified anything they were doing?
I breathed through my nose, sitting on all of those questions. Earlier in the evening, before the party and before the break-in, I’d thought about how badly I wanted to know more about these boys. Then, it’d been about simple curiosity, a burning desire to understand these boys who drew me in against my will. Now there was an element of self-preservation to it—a need to know what exactly I’d gotten myself into.
For several long moments, Bishop and I faced off in silence. I’d been the subject of his ire before and had caved every one of those times, but this time I refused to back down, and anger crackled between us like lightning.
Then Misael spoke up.
“Maybe… we should explain a little more about where we come from? All of us?” He turned in his seat, looking back pointedly at Bishop. “Might help Princess understand more, since she’s still got a chip on her shoulder.” He looked to me. “Y’know. No offence.”
Kace scoffed. “Bit heavy for a coney night.”
Misael shrugged. “So? Better than nothing, if you ask me.”
“We didn’t,” Bishop deadpanned. Misael threw a tater tot into the back seat.
“Don’t be a smart ass, Bish. I’m just sayin’ this whole thing might go smoother if we laid it out there.”
I tore my gaze away from the brown-haired boy in the back seat, flicking a glance over to the driver’s side.
Misael was openly offering up information to me? Really?
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised by it. The boy with caramel skin and laughing brown eyes was the least reserved out of the three of them. He was the shockingly open ray of sunshine that somehow penetrated the hardness of Kace and the stoicism of Bishop.
It did make me curious about how the three of them all worked so well as a unit—how their pieces had ended up coming together and fitting into the little puzzle that they were. I already knew a bit about Bishop’s history, that his parents had both died in quick succession and that he was convinced it was because of my father… an accusation I was still trying to come to terms with.
I sucked in a deep breath, setting down my half-eaten coney dog on the console beside me.
“I’ll listen. Whatever it is you have to say… I’ll listen.” I looked to Bishop, my gaze a silent reminder that I’d listened to him before. That he could talk to me and trust me to keep his confidence.
Shockingly, the harsh lines of his face relaxed. Then he sighed and nodded.
“Fine. But I’m not rehashing any of the shit Princess and I already talked about.”
Misael blinked at him, obviously surprised that Bishop had even explained a tiny bit of his past to me. Bish said nothing, however, sitting back with his coney and a quietly assessing look on his face. Misael shrugged and looked back to me.
“Well, we’ve all been in the system for years,” he said with that same lightness that always followed him. “Where I’m at now? That’s my eighth foster home. My mom passed when I was young. Like young, young. My dad was never in the picture, but that was fine by me. According to Mom, he was an asshole anyway.” He smiled a little. “I ended up in foster care when I was six. Been bouncing around from place to place ever since. That’s where I met Bish and Reaper; we all lived in the same house for about a year.” He nodded over to Kace like he was passing the ball over to him. “Go on.”
Kace’s gaze trailed over to my face. He almost could’ve looked bored if not for the glimmer of something in his eyes that I’d never seen before. A hint of real vulnerability. He was hesitant.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to—”
“My mom’s a junkie,” he said with a shrug. “She’s not dead like Bish and Misael’s, but the courts obviously don’t think a woman high off her ass all the time on ice has it in her to be a good parent. They took me away from her when I was thirteen.”
He said nothing of his father. Something about that omission seemed very intentional though, and I didn’t press for more details. I was still trying to process what they’d told me already.
What were you supposed to say to revelations like those?
My chest ached as if my heart had suddenly forgotten how to beat, as if it sat between my ribs like a useless lump of clay. These three boys who were closer than brothers had all met each other in foster care, and the circumstances that’d put them all into that system were terrible. There had been drugs, shady dealings, violence. Dead parents, absent parents. It was all so horribly… unfair.
&n
bsp; “I can see the wheels churnin’ in your head.” Bishop spoke up, his voice softer than it had been before. “I don’t think it’s anything to try to wrap your head around. Bad shit happens all the time, Princess. You’ve just been living outside of the fucked up bubble long enough to avoid it.”
“So, tracking back to your question about why… That’s why we do what we do. Because boss man might be a little skeevy, but the things he does knock down people who need to get knocked down a peg or two. Granted, he don’t do it because he has a kind heart or whatever.” Misael waved his hand dismissively. “But that doesn’t matter. Still gets done. So if we gotta break into a house to steal some files that proves an exec is swindling people who aren’t privileged enough to fend for themselves, then so be it. And if it means sometimes doing shit we don’t really want to do because it’s what keeps us afloat, then that’s cool too.”
I let that sink in, chewing on my lip. The anger that had burned through me like an inferno was gone, its fuel dried up.
Because even though I could never truly comprehend what their lives had been like, the shit they’d had to deal with while I’d been learning how to play piano and greet guests properly at cocktail parties, I understood.
Our lives had been vastly different, not because I deserved any better than the Lost Boys or anyone else, but simply because we’d been born into different circumstances. And up until recently, my family had had the power and wealth to be able to shield me from the harshness of life.
Because the truth was, no one was truly innocent. No one was purely good. The world was full of terrible people and awful things, and only the strongest survived.
The Lost Boys might not have the money and privilege I had for so long, but they were strong. They might’ve been three of the strongest people I’d ever met.
“I…” My gaze shifted to each of them, tracking from Misael’s earnest eyes to Bishop’s pursed lips to Kace’s clenched jaw. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be.” Kace’s voice wasn’t angry. It wasn’t anything. It was purposefully blank, as if he refused to waste more precious emotions on the things he couldn’t change. “We don’t need your pity. Don’t want it. We just need you to get where we come from and understand that your world isn’t how it is for the rest of us.”
I nodded silently, not offering another useless apology, even though the words pressed against my lips.
Bishop had told me it wasn’t worth trying to wrap my head around. And he was probably right, in a way. How could it be possible to comprehend a world that was full of such chaos and violence, where so many things—both good and bad—were based entirely on chance?
But that didn’t stop the thoughts from spinning over and over in my mind the entire drive home.
Twenty-One
My world felt like it was reeling out of my control. It felt like I’d lived my whole life with blinders on, and now that they’d finally been removed, I could barely see through the harsh, bright glare of the truth that shone down on me. I couldn’t stop thinking about where the Lost Boys had come from, and how it’d made them into the people they were today. And what about all the other students at Slateview High, who probably had similar stories? Because I couldn’t assume that the Lost Boys were the exception and not the rule. Not with what I saw of the world I now lived in.
In the two weeks after the ill-fated party, I saw it more than I had when I first arrived. How many of the pregnant girls that roamed the halls with their rounded bellies had fathers like Misael’s who just weren’t around? The students that sported track marks—how many of them got their drugs from their parents, and how many of those parents were locked in a cycle of dealer-user?
It had me hyper-focused on my surroundings, wondering how many of my perceptions were negatively colored by the fact that I simply didn’t know what life on this side of the tracks was like, and I would never truly know because I simply hadn’t grown up in it.
It was a sobering experience. I think the Lost Boys recognized it. We didn’t have another warehouse day or attend another house party, and although I still saw all three boys every day, still drove to school with them, I could feel them pulling away a little—keeping some distance between us. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was for my benefit or for theirs. Maybe a little of both.
But either way, I was grateful for it.
Since the moment Mom and I had pulled up in front of the squat little rental house, everything in my life had seemed to move like a whirlwind, sucking me up, tossing me around, and spitting me out in an unknown landscape where I could barely tell up from down.
I needed a moment to just… breathe.
On top of my attempts to sort through my broadening understanding of the world, and compounding my confusion about everything I knew and thought I knew, were the lingering questions about my dad.
My first trip to visit him at the prison was scheduled for a Friday afternoon in late October, and I boarded the city bus with some trepidation. I’d been excited when Mom had finally agreed to let me visit, but now I wasn’t sure how to feel; although part of me couldn’t wait to see him, another part of me almost didn’t want to go.
Mom had been uncomfortably secretive about my father since his first call. She still remained in her room most of the time, only going out sparingly in the new—well, newish—car that Isaac had gotten for us. I wondered where she went on these excursions, but I didn’t ask. If she wanted to tell me, she would. Besides, secrets seemed to be the recurring theme of our relationship lately. She didn’t tell me what she did when she left the house, and I never spoke to her about the Lost Boys.
I wonder what that conversation would be like.
A laugh got caught in my throat at the thought, and I dropped my head, staring at a piece of gum stuck to the floor of the bus. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that conversation would be like, because Mom and I didn’t actually speak to each other enough for me to predict how it would go. It was almost sad; the only conversations I could picture clearly in my head were ones I might have with one of the Lost Boys, not even with my mother. I’d known them for less than three months, and in some ways, it felt like I knew them better than my own flesh and blood
That notion lingered in my mind as I transferred to a new bus that took me to the outskirts of Baltimore. Soon, city streets gave way to a large expanse of road, and the looming, concrete building of the prison came into view. I wasn’t the only person getting off at the stop just outside its gates; I wondered how many other passengers were going to visit a friend or family member like I was. How many of them were having doubts and second thoughts as to whether that person actually deserved to be behind bars?
My nerves buzzed under my skin as I checked in and waited. They took us back in small groups, and a guard checked us to make sure we weren’t bringing in anything we weren’t supposed to. The sensation of having a stranger pat me down and stare at me with eyes that seemed to penetrate sent a prickle of discomfort down my spine, but I tried not to show it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I shouldn’t have anything to fear. What was I going to smuggle into a prison anyway?
As I was ushered through to the visitation area, I almost wished I had someone with me. Not my mother though. She was too fragile for a place like prison, and I needed someone strong with me, to help me be strong.
Against my will, my thoughts flitted to Bishop, who I knew would be stoic in the face of leering prisoners and their salacious grins. Or maybe Kace, who would give them a cold stare right back to make them rethink ever looking at me wrong. The one who’d make it the happiest would be Misael. He’d probably just stride right on through, not giving a shit about who was watching or what they thought. He’d probably crack jokes, maybe even make me laugh.
But there were no jokes as I sat at a booth separate from the general visitation area. There were round tables where families sat and where pairs conversed with each other, but my father wasn’t allowed that. Instead, when I sat on the u
ncomfortable plastic chair across from him, there was a thick pane of plexiglass separating us from each other.
I picked up the receiver on my side of the glass, and he did the same.
For a long time, we were silent.
He looked tired. Deep bags hung under his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping properly. His hair, usually slick and styled to perfection, not a single strand out of place, looked lackluster without his usual pomades and products. Even his skin seemed sallow, like he wasn’t going outside regularly. Now that I thought about it, did men in prison get to go outside? I figured they must, but I didn’t know that for sure. Until this year, it never would’ve occurred to me to wonder.
I made a soft noise. The silence was growing uncomfortable, but I couldn’t speak around the sudden lump in my throat. It broke my heart to see my dad like this, more than I ever could’ve imagined. I wasn’t the only one who had changed so much in the relatively short amount of time he’d been in prison.
“Hi, Dad. It’s good to see you.”
“You as well. You look… different.”
Self consciously, I looked down. Dad had a way of saying simple, mundane things and filling them with heavy meaning—and that had definitely been a loaded statement. His scrutinizing gaze continued to take me in as I shifted on the hard seat. This morning, I’d put on a pair of ripped jeans, thinking those would be better than the cutoff shorts I’d made, along with a shirt that was less cropped than most of my others. Compared to what I wore to school most of the time, this outfit was conservative, but it was nothing like what my father was used to seeing me in.
I glanced up, straightening my spine a little.
“You look different too.”
He shifted. I couldn’t get a read on him, and it was a strange feeling. I could almost always read my father—or at least, I’d thought I could. Usually, I didn’t have to guess whether he was happy or angry about something, confused, annoyed, or disappointed. I wondered if it was because he was in prison, out of his element. It felt like I was sitting across from a stranger. Then again, considering what I’d learned since he’d been brought here, maybe that wasn’t so far off. How well had I ever really known my father?